The question of how to teach immigrant students has provoked perhaps the most bitter, rancorous debates in American education over the past 40 years.

During all that period, you could find experts who would say that rapid progress toward mastering English is essential and experts who would disagree and defend a lengthy transition period from the native language.

As a result, when a school district has decided to shift directions and adopt a different approach to English-language instruction, it has usually resulted in angry public debate — as was the case, for example, in the late 1990s in Denver.

It’s clear, however, that when Adams County School District 14 in Commerce City decided to move to an English immersion model several years ago, the transition was not only contentious, it was badly botched. In fact, several incidents recounted by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in a report it issued last week are appalling.

It’s one thing to shift to predominately English instruction in the classroom. It’s quite another to tell students — and especially younger ones — not to speak anything but English on the playground and during lunch, too, as apparently occurred in some instances.

Some teachers told the civil-rights agency that they were told to communicate with parents solely in English — an absurd demand. And in the most disturbing instance of inflexible overreach, a child injured on the playground who complained to a teacher was told he must speak English, too.

We tend to take the Office for Civil Rights’ pronouncements on English-language learning with a grain of salt, given its meritless claims in Denver some years ago, but its report on the Adams district — which has since hired a new superintendent — is thorough and, overall, convincing.

The district didn’t merely expect rapid progress in English. At times, and at specific schools, it seemed to want to make Spanish a dirty word.

Just months ago, Republicans got away with a massive upward redistribution of wealth, raiding $1.5 trillion from the Treasury and sticking future generations with the bill. Now, they're going for more.